SOUL WHISPERER

Rugolo (Eight Practical Steps to Conscious Mothering, 2013) offers a combination of personal recollection and spiritual discussion.

In this latest work, the author tells of her various adventures in the realm of spirituality and the paranormal, involving such phenomena as ghosts, past lives, and clairvoyance. They center most often, though, on the concept of “soul retrieval”—the identification, healing, and release of a wayward fragment of a wandering soul, which has become lodged in a loop of past trauma. “Each of us started in a field of oneness,” she writes. “Over time, the separation of the soul from this field of oneness has occurred.” Rugolo effectively grounds these paranormal observations with selections from her own autobiography; for instance, she mentions how the premature death of her brother gave her a broader awareness of the spiritual realm, and she tells stories of her and her husband, Tony Moch, having various encounters with the spirit world. Rugolo writes about being an on-call spiritual consultant, making house calls to clear out “negative energy” from private homes and advising people on ways to release “stuck” spirits—souls who can’t move on, due to a variety of reasons, including grief, shock, or fear. This forms the bulk of the book’s otherworldly narrative, with Rugolo describing numerous sessions. Overall, a soothing tone of gentleness runs through the entire work, as when she notes that “Helping our spirit brothers and sisters go home is the best choice when given the opportunity.” The author often reflects on how compassion forms the heart of her own story—and not merely compassion for those who’ve passed on: “The process of releasing a karmic lifetime means forgiving the soul who persecuted us or killed us in a past lifetime,” she says. “Sometimes we have to forgive someone else. And sometimes we have to forgive ourselves.” Fans of spiritualist writing will be both intrigued and comforted.

A brief but vivid memoir of a spiritualist.